Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-02-05
THE CEREMONIAL OF WOE.

j. Macdonald Oxley argues wisely,
that funeral trappings, mourning emblems,
monuments, urns and mortuary tablets
lessen not one whit the woes of the
mourner, in no wise perpetuate affectionate
remembrance of the dead, but convert the
outgoing of life into period of gloom,
and in no way conserve a good purpose.
He prefers the method of the father, who,
when their mother died, resolved that her
young children should not associate her
natural departure from life's activity with
terror and gloom. So, between death and
the grave, the household was not robed in
black, the sunlight was not shut out, the
wound of loss was not kept bleeding by
the conventional probings of predatory
funeral ceremonial. When the time for
Inflammation came, the family laid their
dead away, with flowers fresh plucked by
their own hands from gardens she and
they loved, the floral tokens unfashioned
into somter insignia of woe, but as natural
as was the great and inevitable change
that came upon her. So she was buried,
with prayer and loving tears amidst the
sorrows of her wondering children, for the
first time face to face with death, but meet
ing it without any sense Of terror, the
wounds of their affection uniform by
gloomy preparations or agonizing cere-
monial The body of the Bishop of
Ripon was borne to the grave by his sons
and near relatives, and only these assem-
bled after departure from the church a
few flowers, a spray OF ivy and the tears of
love were the only memorials that fell
upon the sod above him. We remember
the death of an aged man whose six sons
were his pall-bearers, discharging an
office too sacred for hands foreign to his
household, and the same hands placed
him in his grave and strewed upon it the
flowers that in life he loved. Oxley's pro-
test against funeral extravaganza and
dramatic working up of "the agonies, F"
hoary with antiquity though the customs
are, is we'll entered. Common sense con-
dennis the extravaganza and folly offuneral
display, which in the majority of cases
visits expense upon those least able
to bear it, and the sequel OF
which is frequently heavy bur-
den of debt. Our mourning customs
lacking the simplicity and gentleness
they should have become dramatic episodes
in life, with actors whose emotion should
be too sacred for the public eye. The rich
may indulge in the luxury of woe typified
by pageant and extravagant ceremonial,
but for the masses it is folly, as also for the
wealthy. The one class should not, the
other cannot, afford it. Mr.. Oxley ex-
claims against Grape, and his protest re-
fleets a growing sentiment that it is the
dictate of fashion and not of grief, and
therefore should be abandoned. 1t is I'M
healthful, as well as expensive, and in
proof of its artifciality the evidence is
marshaled of the rigorous decree of fash
ion, which classifes thesupposed decadence
of grief into such divisions as to call for
departments in stores and millinery shops,
devoted to habilimental consolation "
graded according to the degrees of be-
reavement. We are with Oxley in his de-
mand for the abolition of the signs of
deaths heads and cross-bones in any and
all forms. Let us makeour griefs as sacred
as orr loves